


Dreamscape

by cuddlesome



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abstract, Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Happy Ending, Moral Ambiguity, Psychological Trauma, Shapeshifting, i am physically unable to make this man less sassy, two parts drama one part comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22604500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: Kylo mostly worsens and occasionally betters Rey's visions while she sleeps.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 15
Kudos: 45
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	Dreamscape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nebulous Bounds (RainonyourBack)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainonyourBack/gifts).



> The prompt I chose was "Dreams and nightmares - either is plagued by bad dreams the other is privy to, and tries to keep at bay - or make worse." I ended up having it be both making worse and keeping at bay because I feel like Kylo would end up doing both. Hope you like it!

So many of Rey’s dreams and nightmares involve suffering. Hers. His. But never the galaxy’s. Everything ultimately revolves around them. She’s a horrible Jedi, really. He loves her for it.

Perhaps he should be flattered that he takes up so much room in her subconscious. Mostly he’s annoyed that he finds himself in her mind every time he so much as dozes off. 

Living with Snoke for so long has caused him to build up strong walls around himself, ironclad even in sleep. But Rey, with a mere handful of days of training under her belt, does not know how to guard her mind when she is not faced with direct assault. Rather than repelling him, she drags her greatest rival (and perhaps more) into her dreamscape. 

Kylo Ren tears at Rey in all of her nightmares. Ben Solo serves as the balm in her dreams.

Such is the case tonight.

In the gloom and darkness of an unfamiliar world, he sees her face off with… himself. No, not quite. The spectral Kylo Ren has a far more aggressive stance than one he would ever affect around Rey. His eyes are a piercing yellow and foaming slaver drips from his snarling mouth. He knocks her to the ground, which shifts back and forth from sand to snow and even the occasional moss. The saber in his hands is raised to cleave her pretty little head from her shoulders. Even with her doom seconds away, Rey snarls beautifully up at him.

Kylo, the real Kylo, Ben Solo, one might say, snorts.

She really does see him as far worse than he actually is, doesn’t she? 

He rids her of the caricature of himself with a swift stab of his own saber to its back. It turns into a fine mist. He steps into its place. What could be better than the real thing?

She scrambles to her feet. Tries to run.

He closes a big hand around her wrist, threatening to crush the bones beneath to shards. Pulls her to him. And then—and then—

Rey turns and leans against him, digging her bony shoulder and cheekbone into his meaty torso. Her eyes flutter shut. His breath catches. This is what she truly wants from him. Intimacy, affection… love. He might laugh if not for the shock of it all.

Then she seems to remember herself. Her eyes snap open. With a twist and a jerk she is away again, wrap fluttering in tails behind her.

His hand drops to his side. He doesn’t bother giving chase. For once, he knows exactly where he will find her the next night. 

Or so he thinks.   
  


But no, Kylo finds Rey in different forms throughout her dreams in the nights following. 

A small girl in a ragged tunic. A woman all in black with butcher-knife-point teeth. The former will hug his legs, pet his hair and lips, and call him pretty. The latter tears his throat out while their bodies are entangled on the throne of the Sith. He can’t decide which of them he likes more.

Other times she takes on more bizarre appearances. A rathtar getting forced into a too-small cage. Three Vexis snakes, all at once. A rancor.

He inevitably gets attacked by these, even when there are tears streaming from her alien eyes. He wakes from these nightmares trembling and slick with sweat.

Kylo gets so wrapped in looking at her that he doesn’t realize at first that her mind effects his form, too.

He’s forced to notice when one night he finds breathing agony. Each step toward her, leaden. Pain lances through every fiber, sharpening his connection to the dark side.

This mask, this death’s-head… it’s so much more difficult to see out of than his.

Flowers litter the ground and perfume the air. They don’t drive out the scent of rot in his suit. 

His hands, why can’t he feel his hands? He looks down at the black gloves and they seem wrong, somehow, both the size of them and his limited, reddened view of them. He flexes his fingers. A whir of servos. There are lights twinkling like stars on his torso. He looks up.

“Rey,” he calls, and startles at the sound of his own voice; deep, robotic, silken.

For once she’s in a less chaotic form, in the sand-dirtied scavenger’s garb he first encountered her in, though her face appears a few years older.

She stares at him with utter revulsion. “Isn’t this what you want?”

“You know it isn’t.” Not like this, anyway.

“Well, this—” She gestures at his looming figure. “—is how I see you.”

Despite how painful it is with the scar tissue on his face, he smiles beneath the mask. “And you call me a liar.”

“If you are always going to come and make sleeping hellish, you might as well look the part.”

A stab of unexpected guilt. For the first time he notices the dark circles under her eyes, the gray pallor of her skin. Had all of the personas and creatures she affected looked so sickly?

For whatever reason, she ends up taking his hand in this dream. He can’t feel it. Maybe she is trying to be cruel. If that’s the case, it’s working. 

After that night he changes tact. No longer does he rush her with the intent of—what had he been trying to do? Catch her? Make her his, with all that entailed? Turn her to the dark side? He isn’t sure. 

He wants to give her sweet dreams despite his presence. Is it childish, foolish, even, to want to see his greatest rival happy? 

Yes. It is. Immensely.

He doesn’t care. 

He watches from afar when he senses that is what she desires of him. He creeps to her side and rubs against her, a sleek black lothcat (sometimes literally) when she calls upon him with a crooked finger. And sometimes he is like the Force itself, surrounding her, penetrating her.

This night the dream is familiar, mirroring the first vision he had ever seen in her head. The island. Luke Skywalker’s island, he knows now, but he tries not to let that bother him. 

He wanders it alone for a while, searching for her. The ocean is turbulent on one side of the island. He peers down at it.

At the bottom of the maelstrom he sees Darth Vader staring up at him. With an effort, he looks away. 

He finds Rey fruitlessly trying to meditate on the rocks near the ocean. He sits down beside her.

“Is this a good dream or a bad one?” He looks out at the calm sea and thinks of Chandrila. 

“I’m not sure.” 

“Better, now that I’m here.”

“Hardly,” Rey says, but she smiles and it makes her nose wrinkle cutely.

Later that same night her head lays cushioned on where his tunic bunches up on his thighs. Playing at sleep within sleep. 

He dares to lean down and kiss her forehead. And she smiles again, wider than before. His heart melts into hot goo as if she shoved a lightsaber through it. 

He hums her lullabies that his mother used to sing to him and strokes her cheek. The waters that he’d observed churning nearby slow to a steady calm like the rest of the water. It’s almost a shame that she will have to wake up to reality soon. He can see it happening, the world around them slowly melting away.

Eventually only the two of them, the beach, and the moon remain.

…and some small waterfowl cooing and chirping incessantly, but he ignores those.

It is enough to be with her like this if only in her dreams.


End file.
